Daniel Woolf

The social circulation of the past : English historical culture 1500-1730

PART I: THE PAST AND THE PRESENT PART II: THE ANCESTRAL PAST PART III: THE TANGIBLE PAST PART IV: THE PAST REMEMBERED

Erudition and the Idea of History in Renaissance England

It has become a commonplace that Tudor and early Stuart historical authors recognized a formal distinction between “antiquities” and “history,” yet neither the grounds nor the extent of the distinction has been explored in depth. Because some Tudor historical writers could and, on occasion, did ignore it in practice, the distinction has sometimes been deemed a technicality of only minor interest. Nearly twenty-five years ago, F. Smith Fussner described what he termed an English “historical revolution” between 1580 and 1640, a revolution which witnessed the rise of historical writing in something like its modern form. From Fussners point of view, it mattered only that men were bringing new sources and innovative, critical research methods to the study of the past; whether they called themselves historians, scholars, philologists or antiquaries was of little importance.

Speech, Text, and Time: The Sense of Hearing and the Sense of the Past in Renaissance England *

Midway through his account of the reign of King Edward III, John Speed paused to remind his readers of what had gone before, an account of Edwards wars in France, by way of leading into his next subject, the kings godliness. “You have heard a part of great king Edwards victorious fortunes in battle, both by land and sea; be not ignorant of his pietie.” Speeds choice of language is striking: “You have heard.” Many early modern authors employed this same peculiar device. In 1600, Thomas Danett commenced a chapter of his A continuation of the history of France with the sentence, “You have heard how a truce for five years was concluded betweene the kings of Fraunce and Spaine.” Thomas James, translating a French work on the Stoics, wrote, “You have heard discoursed unto you the principall lawes which the Stoickes thincke expedient….” To justify the printing of a quotation from a medieval manuscript, William Camden urged his reader to “heare the verie words out of that private historic” Richard Verstegan directed the reader to “heer the testimony of sundry ancient and approved authors.” The anonymous author of The historie of Mervine (1612), a chivalric romance, reminded the reader of an earlier event with the remark: “the childe (as you have heard) was baptized….” As historians, we have all had occasion to refer the reader back to earlier points in our articles, theses, and books. As a rule, such passages begin with a phrase like “we have seen,” or “it has been shown,” not “you have heard.”